Ask an Alexa device “Who is the greatest living actress?” and the answer you’ll get is Meryl Streep. That’s how widely revered the three-time Academy Award winner is, although a handful of film critics and movie fans may disagree. In particular, she is heralded for her versatility — moving easily from drama to comedy — and her mastery of accents. She also can belt out a song when the production is a musical.
With an astonishing 21 Oscar nominations, Streep far outpaces the next two actors on the list, Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, who have 12 nominations each. Hepburn won four times, Nicholson three.
Streep is even more of a favorite with the Golden Globe Awards, racking up 32 nominations for film and television roles. She’s taken home the trophy eight times and was presented the Cecil B. de Mille Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment” in 2017.
When she didn’t receive a nomination in 2020 for either “The Prom” or “Let Them All Talk,” some entertainment journalists deemed it an unexpected snub.
The selection of her worst movies is based on an index of Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings. IMDb is an online movie database owned by Amazon. Rotten Tomatoes is an online movie and TV review aggregator. Only feature films with 25,000 reviews or more on IMDb were considered for this analysis. Each movie’s movie theater ticket (domestic box office) was obtained from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services.
“Lions for Lambs,” released in 2007, is her worst movie. It also starred Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Michael Peña, and Redford directed it. Its domestic box office was $15.00 million
In this 2007 war drama focused on the U.S. involvement in Iraq, Streep plays TV journalist Janine Roth, who interviews a U.S. senator played by Tom Cruise about his plan to win the war on terror.